Smile
by OutrageousIngeniousBrilliance
Summary: Trolls are not kind in any sense of the word. They are way too bloodthirsty for that. Tavros was different, very different, so different he might as well be a human on the inside of his grey skin.


_Prompt 13/25_

_Prompt: Smile – v., to form one's features into a pleased, kind, or amused expression, typically with the corners of the mouth turned up and the front teeth exposed._

Smile

The roads were harsh and tough on this side of town. The gates and wall around the city loomed over the residents and even in the early afternoon the sun was blocked out. The smoke from the factories lingered at ground level and turned clothes dull. It used to be the humans had warned smog would ashen their skin but the trolls laughed, they were already grey.

A small brown troll, maybe three sweeps old, walked the congested streets back home to his small hive where he lived with his lusus, an older brown troll with three other wards, and his 'siblings'. He heard Bluebloods had one lusus for each child but those were usually dismissed as rumors. But, really, how was he to know? It's not like he had ever met a Blueblood.

His school was in Yellowblood territory, a nicer place than the apartment trailers that Tavros lived in. Yellowbloods had apartments with food places that were stocked ever two weeks. It was less crowded than the outlying districts and the apartments weren't stack trailers lying upon one another like in Tavros' neighborhood.

As he neared his home he was welcomed at the sight of more brown bloods than yellow. As a child he was not really looked down upon for being in yellow territory, but as he grew up the stares would be harder and harder to avoid. On the dirt streets, crowded with trash, lingered the Burgandybloods, hidden in the nooks and crannies between Brownblood houses. No matter how long Rusts worked they would never make enough to rent a room or receive food.

Tavros arrived at his house only to find the old burgundy couple who had loitered there their whole lives had been replaced with a young adult with five young burgundies of all ages. One of the girls, Tavros recognized, was in his class and sat with all of the other rusts.

No one talked to the rusts. His friend Nepeta had been told to stay away from them from her lusus troll, but she was an Oliveblood so he guessed that would be normal for them. Her lusus also told her to stay away from Brownbloods.

The family wore dirty worn out clothes and huddled in the small alley under blankets. They looked hungry. Trolls are not kind in any sense of the word. They are way too blood thirsty for that. It is one of the reasons trolls were quarantined by the humans.

Tavros was different, very different, so different he might as well be a human on the inside of his grey skin. He grabbed some hard bread from his hive, just a bit, and went outside to the girl. She had pretty curly hair with curly horns and smiled wide, almost creepily at the sight of the offering. The others looked on jealously, eyes green with envy_. _

_Green with envy_, Tavros thought, _I bet they would do anything to be a Greenblood, though so would I_. The presence of one of his 'siblings' coming home jerked him away from the girl and he went inside his small hive. As he laid awake, thinking of the girl and trying to keep the city noise from his ears, he was thankful he had a bed and a roof.

The next day Tavros saw the girl again in school, but she did not meet his eyes. Hers stayed on the ground and on other rust bloods. Tavros, though, could not get the girl out of his head, no matter how she never acknowledged him. Society told him to ignore the rusts; the only ones Brownbloods could look down on. His conscience on the other hand, said to help her. So he did.

Every day he gave her bread and then talked to her. She never responded. After a month he made a daring move, one that took up to a week of chickening out to do. Tavros sat by the girl at lunch, not really having anything to lose. A _Brownblood_ sat next to a _rust_ at lunch, was he _crazy_?

"You shouldn't sit here." The girl simply said.

"Uh…." Everyone was silent as they looked at the two socially unacceptable trolls. The boy's stomach churned as he started to become unbearably nervous. A feeling of bile rose through his throat at the attention, naturally shy and nervous as he was.

Quickly, he stood up and raced out of the room and vomited into a trashcan. The cafeteria erupted with laughter. Jokes about rusts making you vomit from just their smell spread like wild fire throughout the classrooms. Tavros felt horrible as he went home early that day. Too embarrassed and guilty, he didn't visit the girl that day.

The next day he didn't see her at school. The teachers always knew when rusts didn't come to school and told everyone when they skipped. If they skipped for more than a week an enforcement officer was called. Then they weren't mentioned again. Everyone knew what happened when living on the streets was hard. This was especially true during Earth winter when warm blooded trolls were affected the most. Tavros wondered if rusts had community funerals like Brownbloods.

He visited her after school, to make sure she didn't die. She was nursing a black eye and a nasty bruise the size of horns on her arms. Young trolls can be so mean.

"Why did you sit next to me?" She asked quietly.

"I want to be your friend." He answered and it was the truth.

"But I'm rust." The girl put a blanket around her as the wind picked up and made the alleyway a tunnel of cool air.

"Um, I'm Tavros." The boy said. There was a small silence. It was a joke, a lame joke, but a joke. The girl smiled so wide, a beautiful one with teeth showing. It was absolutely dazzling. She laughed, too, a melodic one that rang through the city noise.

"I'm Aradia."

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